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Feature Writing - JRN300 Fall 2025
Course
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David Vaughan
A short description of the course
/files/3125989/JRN300-Feature_Writing-F24-Vaughan.pdf
This course moves beyond basic journalistic reporting and news writing. Students will gain experience in writing longer, impactful feature articles. We’ll work on techniques to find angles and develop them into research-based non-fiction stories that have characters, show development and follow a structural, narrative arc from beginning to end. The class is run as a magazine editorial team, with students pitching their stories and workshopping their drafts. We shall look at different ways of writing for different platforms and at multimedia aspects of feature writing, including audio and video.
Here is the course outline:
1. Lesson 1
Sep 4
Introduction to the course |
2. Lesson 2
Sep 11
Profile Writing |
3. Lesson 3
Sep 18
Profile Writing 2 |
4. Lesson 4
Sep 25
The Ladder of Abstraction |
5. Lesson 5
Oct 2
Profile Writing: peer reviews and preparation for next week's visit from the Czech journalist Jan Bělíček. |
6. Lesson 6
Oct 9
Feature Writing: finding the story Visit from Czech journalist, Jan Bělíček |
7. Lesson 7
Oct 16
Feature Writing |
8. Lesson 8
Oct 23
Prix Bohemia: Assessing radio reports submitted to the international competition Prix Bohemia, October 2024 |
9. Lesson 9
Nov 6
Students present their progress on Assignment 2 |
10. Lesson 10
Nov 20
Marianne Allweiss visit. We shall also hear the remaining student progress reports for Assignment 2 |
11. Lesson 11
Nov 25
Visit from Ray Furlong from RFE/RL |
12. Lesson 12
Nov 27
Rewriting a feature story |
13. Working with sound...
Nov 29
Using sound as part of the story. |
14. Lesson 11
Nov 20
Meeting Marianne Allweiss from German public-service radio ARD |
15. Lesson 12: Sound MixesUsing sound to tell a story |